What We Learned From NFL Week 2 (Sports Betting)

All of the Week 2 schedule is in the books except for the Monday Night Football affair. The headline of the week will be key injuries to quarterbacks as the New Orleans Saints and Pittsburgh Steelers lost their starters. We’ll begin this week’s ‘What We Learned’ with a team that’s learning just how good they can be with their healthy starter, who missed almost all of last season:

Sign up now at PointsBet and a $100 bonus when you bet $50 >>

1) San Francisco 49ers Look Legit

The 49ers looked a bit shaky in their Week 1 win but as we’ve come to find out, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – at least their defense – is improved. Facing a much weaker opponent and defense in Week 2, the 49ers absolutely went off. Jimmy Garoppolo finished the day 17-of-25 for 298 yards and three touchdowns as the team won 41-17 at Cincinnati and compiled 572 yards of offense.

The Bengals aren’t very good and the 49ers haven’t proved a lot just yet, but they’re 2-0 and host the Pittsburgh Steelers next week, then have an early bye, and then host the Cleveland Browns. They have a clear path to 4-0 and might be a team that’s much better than we all expected.

2) The Steelers Are In Trouble

Speaking of the Steelers, it’s still early in the season, but it is getting late. That’s because the team is 0-2 and now lost quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to injury. With the road trip to San Francisco and a visit from Baltimore as two of their next three games, this Steelers team could be 1-4 after five weeks if Big Ben isn’t back.

But the Steelers problems go much deeper than Big Ben. For a second straight week, the defense was abused. Pittsburgh was outgained 425-261 in yards and 25-17 in first downs in a game that maybe shouldn’t have been as close as the final score indicates. The Steelers defense simply could not get key stops when the team needed them.

On offense, nobody wants to say it, but this team looks like they actually miss Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown as this unit has become much easier to contain without those two All-Pro caliber weapons.

3) The Bills Are A Good Team

The Bills are 2-0, but don’t pop the champagne yet. They’ve only defeated the two New York teams. On top of that, every Bills team that’s started 2-0 since the start of the year 2000 has failed to make the playoffs.

However, this Bills team looks different. For a second straight week, second-year quarterback Josh Allen made key throws with the game on the line. For a second straight week, the Bills ran the ball very well as they averaged 4.4 yards per carry against the Giants after producing 5.1 yards per carry against the Jets. And the defense has stood tall, too, with a total of five sacks and 10 tackles for a loss through two games.

The old Bills would have been 1-1 or 0-2 after these two contests but this year’s version looks like a young squad on the rise. They should be able to push for an 8-10 win season if they keep playing like this.

4) Chargers Offense Has Been Sapped

The Chargers were a 12-win team last season, but they look like a shadow of their former selves. It’s true that we might not be writing this had Philip Rivers not thrown a game-ending interception in the end zone, but it’s time to take a closer look at this Chargers team. They’ve lost to the Detroit Lions and nearly lost to the Indianapolis Colts. Both are not bad teams, but the Chargers – if they truly want to be a Super Bowl contender – have to win these types of games.

Too much talent has been stripped off this team. From Melvin Gordon to Russell Okung to Tyrell Williams to Hunter Henry to Derwin James, you can’t take this many quality starters off a roster and expect to see the same performance.

5) Broncos’ Defense Isn’t What It Used To Be

After two games, everyone’s trying to figure out who the Broncos are, but I can tell you that their defense simply isn’t what it used to be. A lot of people figured that with Von Miller and Bradley Chubb there, and new head coach Vic Fangio – a defensive guru – coming over, this team would be elite on that side of the ball. They’re not. They let the Oakland Raiders walk all over them in the opener and they struggled to keep the Chicago Bears off the scoreboard.

The Broncos took a 14-13 lead with just 31 seconds to go. The old, great Broncos’ defenses would have slammed the door shoot – especially against Mitchell Trubisky, who had less than 100 passing yards in the entire game at that point. Instead, they somehow allowed him to walk up the field, get into field goal range, and put the team in place to kick the game-winner.

The Broncos only allowed 273 yards in total, which is very good, but the Bears played such a vanilla offense that this result was not surprising. What was surprising was that Denver couldn’t pitch a shutout when the Bears didn’t trust Trubisky to throw until the final drive of the game.

Yes, Miller and Chubb are still there, and Chris Harris is a good corner, but there’s not a lot on the defensive line or in the secondary. This is a middle-of-the-pack unit that’s going to be exposed in games where the offense struggles.

Sign up now at PointsBet and get up to $1,000 back on your first two bets! >>

Dave Golokhov is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Dave, check out his archive and follow him @davegolokhov.